Soaps often put out their best material when they're exploring down-to-earth issue-based storylines that could happen to any one of us, but let's face it, we all secretly love the moments when they leave us baffled by going batshit crazy too.

Remember when these storylines pushed the boundaries so far they left us scratching our heads for a while?

Fast forward a couple of weeks later, and Neighbours pulled the rug from under us by revealing the whole thing was a total fake-out. Turned out Dee was still dead (boo!) and Toadie's mysterious visitor was actually a cunning impostor, who somehow looked and sounded exactly like her.

You remember the ones: was "Dee" her own sister? Was Toadie's brother Stonie secretly involved in the scam? Was Fake Dee actually a brainwashed version of Real Dee without knowing it? No to all three...

Yup, "Gavin" was actually Andy Carver, an acquaintance of the real deal, who'd stolen the identity of his old friend for reasons which never did make much sense. Sure enough, Michael's actual son eventually ended up on the Street too, leaving us with a Real Gavin and a Fake Gavin to contend with.

Given that both characters looked nothing like each other, it actually wasn't too difficult to keep track with this particular saga. Even dopey Michael discovered the truth quickly enough when he bothered to look through an old photo album, although the timing wasn't perfect as Real Gavin was already dead by then. In fact, with Michael, Real Gavin and Fake Gavin all now dead after separate tragedies, there really was no happy ending for anyone here, was there?

3. Val's ghost (Emmerdale)

Soaps are taking supernatural turns increasingly often these days, but it was Val Pollard's last hurrah that really messed with our heads after she carked it in Emmerdale's Summer Fate episodes in 2015.

Alas, she hadn't. After a quick ad break left us pondering, we discovered that Eric was merely struggling with his grief and back-from-the-dead Val was just a figment of his imagination. Way to dash our hopes!

But hang on a minute, was it really all in Eric's head, or had Val genuinely come back to say goodbye in spirit form? We couldn't help noticing that Val's ghost quipped that she had "a hell of a view on the way out", referencing how she'd spent 15 minutes talking to her own reflection in a shard of glass just before she died. Since Eric couldn't have known this precise detail, does it mean spooks really do exist in the land of Emmerdale?

4. Twincest (Hollyoaks)

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It took a while to get our heads around this one... and to be honest, we really, really wished we were still blissfully ignorant when we did figure it all out. Sly Sienna and village hunk Dodger always had a slightly weird relationship after meeting "for the first time" as long-lost twins in 2013, but as ever, Hollyoaks' plans pushed the boundaries much further than anyone could have imagined.

Unsurprisingly, Hollyoaks didn't go into too many details about the reasons for the twins' dodgy memory lapse, leaving us all to wonder whether such a creepy coincidence was even possible. (Short answer: In the real world, no. In the anything-can-happen Hollyoaks-verse, yes.)

5. Angie and Josie (Home and Away)

Summer Bay's evil deputy principal Angie Russell went down in Home and Away history as one of the show's best ever villains. From seducing a student to making false sexual assault allegations, there was never a dull moment around Summer Bay High with Angie around. Well, at least until she got booted out from the school and was brutally killed in 2003!

Somehow, life in the Bay seemed a little duller without amoral Angie and it seems the producers were in firm agreement, coming up with a sneaky way to bring actress Laurie Foell back to the show.

When Angie was definitely dead and buried, it turned out that she had an identical cousin Josie, who went on to become a regular character in her own right between 2004 and 2005.

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While Josie certainly had a cunning streak and looked just like the dreaded Ange, she thankfully wasn't quite as deranged as her cousin. But nothing could beat the moment she first arrived in the Bay and everyone thought Angie was back from the dead: stone the flamin' crows!

6. Claudette's return from the dead (EastEnders)

Forget Kathy Beale and Dirty Den's back-from-the-dead shockers – can anything match Claudette Hubbard's miraculous resurrection when it comes to mind-boggling twists? When Claudette took a nasty tumble down a set of basement stairs and hit her head on a brick last year, we naturally thought we'd seen the last of the scheming villain... especially when her son Vincent covered up the nasty incident by burying her in the basement.

Soaps who love a touch of melodrama can't resist an evil twin storyline and that's exactly what Neighbours brought us with the introduction of Robert and Cameron Robinson in 2006, who were both played by actor Adam Hunter. We wonder if he got two pay packets?

Anyway, with good twin Cam conveniently in a coma, this provided the perfect chance for his evil counterpart Robert to carry out a malevolent masterplan – turning up on the Street and sneakily impersonating him. With the "CamRob" con born, the stage was set for him to target everyone close to Paul one by one – even trying to murder his own sister Elle with a car bomb.

Even when CamRob's murderous intentions were finally exposed, he managed to switch places with his comatose twin (who'd conveniently just woken up) and frame him for everything, giving the whole saga yet another chapter as he continued with his endless deception.

Amid all the sneaky switching and stolen identities, discerning viewers did question why the usually eagle-eyed Elle couldn't tell her two brothers apart after spending years growing up with them. No wonder Neighbours wrote themselves out of a corner by killing off one of the twins and sending the other to prison.

8. Kirsty and Jade aren't twins (Home and Away)

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Remember how brilliant Home and Away was when the Sutherlands were the dominant family? With that said, the writers did ruin things just a tad with a completely unexpected reveal about twins Kirsty and Jade four years into their time on the show. Turned out there'd been a shock mix-up at the hospital on the day they were born, meaning that the girls weren't actually twins as their parents unknowingly brought the wrong baby (Jade) home.

Just as we were still getting our heads around it all, we got to meet Kirsty's real twin Laura, with actress Christie Hayes now taking on both roles as the girls were identical. The only problem was that the big reveal undermined previous storylines about the "telepathic twin connection" between Kirsty and Jade, which was suddenly all forgotten. Retcon alert!

In any case, Laura didn't stick around in the show for long... we suspect Home and Away just couldn't be bothered with the tricky split screen technology required whenever they needed Christie Hayes to play two characters in one scene.

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